25005-125005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
PLAYS: PLEASANT
AND UNPLEASANT
II
25005-225005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
Plays: Pleasant and Unplea-
sant. By Bernard Shaw.The
SecondVolume,containing
the four Pleasant Plays.
Constable and Company
Ltd. London: i Q 11.
25005-325005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
First printed March 1898
Reprinted February 1900
May 1901, March 1904, August 1905
December 1905, A$ril 1906
/»/y 1907, September 1908
'April 1911
25005-425005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
PREFACE
READERS of the discourse with which the preceding volume
commences will remember that I turned my hand to play-
writing when a great deal of talk about " the New Drama,"
followed by the actual establishment of a aNew" Theatre
(the Independent), threatened to end in the humiliating
discovery that the New Drama, in England at least, was a
figment of the revolutionary imagination. This was not to
be endured, I had rashly taken up the case ; and rather
than let it collapse, I manufactured the evidence.
Man is a creature of habit. You cannot write three
plays and then stop. Besides, the New movement did
not stop. In 1894, Miss Florence Farr, who had already
produced Ibsen's Rosmersbolm, undertook the management
of the Avenue Theatre for a season on the new lines.
There were, as available New dramatists, myself, discovered
by the Independent Theatre (at my own suggestion) ; Mr
John Todhunter, who had indeed been discovered before,
but whose Blaek Cat had been one of the Independent's
successes; and Mr W. B* Yeats, a genuine discovery,
Mr Todhuntcr supplied A Comedy of Sigfo: Mi Yeats,
The Land of Hear?s Desire. I, having nothing but ** un-
pleasant " plays in my desk, hastily completed a first
attempt at a pleasant one, and called it Arms and the Man*
It passed for a success: that is, the first night was as
complimentary as could be wished ; and it ran from the 11st
of ApriPto the 7tKof July. To witness it tfw» miKi;/» ™'«*
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vi Plays9 Pleasant and Unpleasant
£1777 : 5 : 6? an average of ^23:2 : 5 per representation
(including nine matinees). A publisher receiving £ijoo
for a book would have made a satisfactory profit : experts
in theatrical management will contemplate that figure with
a grim smile. This, however, need not altogether discourage
speculators in 2Oth century drama. If the people who
were willing to pay £1700 to see the play had all come
within a fortnight instead of straggling in during twelve
weeks — and such people can easily be trained to under-
stand this necessity — the result would have been financi-
ally satisfactory to the management and at least flattering
to the author. In America, where the play, after a fort-
night in New York, took its place simply as an Item in
the repertory of Mr Richard Mansfield, it has kept alive
to this day.
In the autumn of 1894 I spent a few weeks in Florence,
where I occupied myself with the religious art of the
Middle Ages and its destruction by the Renascence.
From a former visit to Italy on the same business I had
hurried back to Birmingham to discharge my duties .as
musical critic at the Festival there. On that occasion
there was a very remarkable collection of the works of our
**pre-Raphaelite '* painters at the public gallery. I looked,
at these, and then went into the Birmingham 'churches to
see the windows of William Morris and Burne-Jones, On
the whole, Birmingham was more hopeful than the Italian
cities; for the art it had to shew me was the work of
living men, whereas modern Italy had, as far as I could
see, no more connection with Giotto than. Port Said . has
with Ptolemy* Now I am no believer'in the worth of any
u taste " for art that cannot produce what it professes' to
appreciate. When my subsequent visit to Italy found
me practising the dramatist's craft, the time was ripe for
a modern pre-Raphaelitc play* Religion' was alive again,
coming back upon men —even clergymen—.with-such
power that not the Church of England itself could keep It,,
out* Here my activity as a.'Socialist had place8 me on'
25005-625005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
Preface vii
sure and familiar ground. To me the members of the
Guild of St Matthew were no more " High Church clergy-
men," Dr. Clifford no more " an eminent Nonconformist
divine," than I was to them " an infidel." There is only
one; religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.
We all had the same thing to say ; and though some of us
cleared our throats to say It by singing Secularist lyrics
or republican hymns, we sang them to the music of
uOnward, Christian Soldiers" or Haydn's "God preserve
the Emperor.'* But unity, however desirable in political
agitations, is fatal to drama, since every drama must be the
artistic presentation of a conflict. The end may be re-
conciliation or destruction ; or, as in life Itself, there may
be no end ; but the conflict is indispensable : no conflict,
no drama. Certainly, It is easy to dramatize the prosaic
conflict of Christian Socialism with vulgar Unsocialism :
for instance, in Widower/ Houses^ the clergyman, who
does not appear on the stage at all, is the real antagonist
of the slum landlord. But the obvious conflicts of un-
mistakeable good with unmistakeable evil can only supply
the crude drama of villain and hero, In which some abso-
lute point of view is taken, and the dissentients are treated
by the dramatist as enemies to be deliberately and piously
vilified. In such cheap wares 1 do not deal. Even in
the propagandist dramas of the previous volume 1 have
allowed every person Ms or her own point of view, and
have, I hope, to the full extent of my understanding of
him, been as sympathetic with Sir George Crofts as with
«iny of the more genial and popular characters in the
present volume. To distil the quintessential drama from
pre-Raphaclitism, medieval or modem, it must be shewn In
conflict with the first broken, nervous, stumbling attempts
to formulate Its own revolt against Itself as it develops into
something higher. A coherent explanation of any such
revolt, addressed Intelligibly and prosaically to the Intellect,
can only come when the work Is done, and indeed done
with ** that is to say, when the development, accomplished,
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vill Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant
admitted, and assimilated, is only a story of yesterday.
Long before any such understanding can be reached, the
eyes of men begin to turn towards the distant light of the
new age. Discernible at first only by the eyes of the
man of genius, it must be focussed by him on the speculjim
of a work of art, and flashed back from that into the eyes
of the common man. Nay, the artist himself has no other
way of making himself conscious of the ray : it is by a
blind instinct that he keeps on building up his masterpieces
until their pinnacles catch the glint of the unrisen sun.
Ask him to explain himself prosaically, and you find that
he "writes like an angel and talks like poor Poll/* and Is
himself the first to make that epigram at his own expense.
Mr Ruskin has told us clearly enough what is in the pic-
tures of Carpaccio and Bellini : let him explain, if he can,
where we shall be when the sun that is caught by the
summits of the work of his favorite Tintoretto, of his
aversion Rembrandt, of Mozart, of Beethoven and Wagner,
of Blake and of Shelley, shall have reached the valleys,
Let Ibsen explain, if he can, why the building of churches
and happy homes is not the ultimate destiny of Man, and
why, to thrill the unsatisfied younger generations, he must
mount beyond it to heights that now seein unspeakably
giddy and dreadful to him, and from which the first
climbers must fall and dash themselves to pieces, lie
cannot explain it: he can only shew it to you as a vision in
the magic glass of his artwork ; so that you may catch his
presentiment and make what you can of it. And this is
the function that raises dramatic art above imposture and
pleasure hunting, and enables the dramatist to be some-
thing more than a skilled liar mid paudar.
FTcrc, then, was the higher, but vaguer, timzdcr vision,
and the incoherent, mischievous, and even ridiculous un-
pnu'ticalncsu, which offered me a dramatic antagonist for the
clear, bold, sure, sensible, benevolent, salutarily shortsighted
Christian Socialist idealism. 1 availed myself of it in
CMtdithi, the "drunken scene" in which has been tftueh
25005-825005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
Preface ix
appreciated, I am told, in Aberdeen. I purposely contrived
the play in such a way as to make the expenses of represen-
tation insignificant; so that, without pretending that I could
appeal to a very wide circle of playgoers, I could reason-
afyly sound a few of our more enlightened managers as to
an experiment with half a dozen afternoon performances.
They admired the play generously : indeed I think that if
any of them had been young enough to play the poet, my
proposal might have been acceded to, in spite of many in-
cidental difficulties. Nay, if only I had made the poet a
cripple, or at least blind, so as to combine an easier dis-
guise with a larger claim for sympathy, something might
have been done. Mr. Richard Mansfield, who has, with
apparent ease, made me quite famous in America by his
productions of my plays, went so far as to put the play
actually into rehearsal before he would confess himself
beaten by the physical difficulties of the part. But they
did beat him ; and Candida did not see the footlights
until last year, when my old ally the Independent Theatre,
making a propagandist tour through the provinces with
A Dollys Bouse, added Candida to its repertory, to the great
astonishment of its audiences*
In an idle moment in 1895 I began the little scene
called The Man of Dtstlny^ which is hardly more than a
bravura piece to display the virtuosity of the two principal
performers* I am indebted to Mr Murray Carson for a
few"' "performances of it at Croydon last year. Except
for tffese it remains, so far, unknown to playgoers.
In the meantime I had devoted the spare moments of
1896 to the composition of two more plays, only the first
of which appears in this volume* T0u Nwtr Can TtH
was an attempt to comply with many requests for a play In
which the much paragraphed "brilliancy '* of Arms and tht
M&n should be tempered by some consideration for the
requirements of managers in search of fashionable comedies
for West End theatres. I had no difficulty in complying,
as I*have always cast my plays in the ordinary practical1
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x Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant
comedy form in use at all the theatres; and far from taking
an unsympathetic view of the popular preference for fun,
fashionable dresses, a little music, and even an exhibition
of eating and drinking by people with an expensive air,
attended by an if-possible-comic waiter, I was more than
willing to shew that the drama can humanize these things
as easily as they, in undramatic hands, can dehumanize the
drama. But it seems I overdid it; for the test of rehearsal
proved that in making my play acceptable I had made it,
for the moment at least, impracticable. And so I reached
the point at which, as narrated in the preface to the first
volume, I resolved to avail myself of my literary expertness
to put my plays before the public in my own way.
It will be noticed that I have not been driven to this
expedient by any hostility on the part of our managers* [
will not pretend that the modern actor-manager's rare
combination of talent as an actor \vith capacity as a man
of business can in the nature of things be often associated
with exceptional critical insight. As a rule, by the time a
manager has experience enough to make him as safe a judge
of plays as a Bond Street dealer is of pictures, he begins to
be thrown out in his calculations by the slow but constant
change of public taste, and by his own growing conserva-
tism. But his need for new plays is so great, and the
few accredited authors are so little able to keep pace
with their commissions, that he is always apt to overrate
rather than to underrate his discoveries in the way of new
pieces by new authors. An original work by a man of
genius like Ibsen may, of course, baffle him as it baffles
many professed critics; but in the beaten path of drama
no unacted works of merit, suitable to his purposes, have
been discovered ; whereas the production, at great expense,
of very faulty plays written by novices (not "backers") is
by no means an unknown event. Indeed, to anyone who
can estimate, even vaguely, the complicated trouble, the
risk of heavy loss, and the initial expense and thought*
involved by the production of a play, the ease with wliich
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Preface xl
dramatic authors, known and unknown, get their works
performed must needs seem a wonder.
Only, authors must not expect managers to invest many
thousands of pounds in plays, however fine (or the reverse),
which will clearly not attract perfectly commonplace people.
Playwriting and theatrical management, on the present
commercial basis, are businesses like other businesses, de-
pending on the patronage of great numbers of very ordinary
customers. When the managers and authors study the wants
of these customers, they succeed : when they do not, they
fail. A public-spirited manager, or an author with a keen
artistic conscience, may choose to pursue his business with
the minimum of profit and the maximum of social useful-
ness by keeping as close as he can to the highest market-
able limit of quality, and constantly feeling for an exten-
sion of that limit through the advance of popular culture.
An unscrupulous manager or author may aim simply at the
maximum of profit with the minimum of risk. These are
the opposite poles of our system, represented in practice
by our first rate managements at the one endy and the
syndicates which exploit pornographic musical farces at the
other* Between them there is plenty of room for most
talents to breathe freely ; at all events there is a career,
no harder of access than any cognate careei, for all quali-
fied playwright!; who bring the manager what his customers
want and understand, or even enough of it to induce them
to swallow at the same time a great deal that they neither
want nor understand (the public is touchiugly humble
in such matters).
For all that, the commercial limits are too narrow for
our social welfare* The theatre is growing in importance
as a social organ. Bad theatres arc an mischievous as
bad schools or bat! churches j for modern civilization is
rapidly multiplying the class to which the theatre is both
school and church* Public and private life become daily
more theatrical: the modern Kmperor is the ** leading
man* on the stage of his country; ull great newspapers
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xii Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant
axe now edited dramatically ; the records of our law courts
shew that the spread of dramatic consciousness is affecting
personal conduct to an unprecedented extent, and affecting
it by no means for the worse, except in so far as the
dramatic education of the persons concerned has been
romantic : that is, spurious, cheap and vulgar. The truth
is that dramatic invention is the first effort of man to
become intellectually conscious. No frontier can be
marked between drama and history or religion, or between
acting and conduct; no distinction made between them
that is not also the distinction between the masterpieces
of the great dramatic poets and the commonplaces of our
theatrical seasons. When this chapter of science is con-
vincingly written, the national importance of the theatre
will be as unquestioned as that of the army, the fleet, the
church, the law, and the schools.
For my part, I have no doubt that the commercial limits
should be overstepped, and that the highest prestige, with a
financial position of reasonable security and comfort, should
be attainable in theatrical management by keeping the
public in constant touch with the highest achievements of
dramatic art. Our managers will not dissent to this : the
best of them are so willing to get its near that position as
they can without ruining themselves, that they can all
point to honorable losses incurred through timing **over
the heads of the public,** and will no doubt risk »uch
loss again, for the sake of their reputation a$ artists, as
soon as a few popular successes enable them to afford it
But even if it were possible for them to educate the nation
at their own private cost, why should they be expected to do
it ? There are much stronger objections to the pauperisa-
tion of the public by private dolei than were ever enter-
tained, even by the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834^ to
the pauperization of private individuals by public doles- If
we want a theatre which shall be to the drama what the
National Gallery and British Museum ire to painting and
literature; we can get it by endowing it m the stmf way.
25005-1225005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
Preface xili
The practical course is to offer the State such a nucleus
for a national theatre as was presented in the case of the
National Gallery by the Angerstein collection, and in that
of the British Museum by the Cotton and Sloane collec-
tions. This would seem the moment for my old ally the
Independent Theatre, or its rival the New Century
Theatre, to invite attention by a modest cough. But
though I set some store by both, I perceive that they will
be as incapable of attracting a State endowment as they
already are of even uniting the supporters of u the New
Drama." The first step must be to form an influential
committee, without any actors, critics, or dramatists on it,
and with as many persons of title as possible, for the
purpose of approaching one of our leading managers with a
proposal that he shall, under a guarantee against loss,
undertake a certain number of afternoon performances of
the class required by the committee, in addition to his
ordinary business. If the committee is influential enough,
the offer will be accepted. In that case, the first perform-
ance will be the beginning of a classic repertory for the
manager and his company which every subsequent per-
formance will extend* The formation of the repertory
will go hand in hand with the discovery and habituation
of a regular audience for it, like that of the Saturday
Popular Concerts; and it will eventually become profit*
able for the manager to multiply the number of per-
formances at his own risk* It might even become worth
hit while to take a second theatre and establish the reper-
tory permanently in it. In the event of any of his
elastic productions proving a fashionable success, he could
transfer it to his fashionable house and make the most of
it there. Such managership would carry a knighthood
with it; and such a theatre would be the needed nucleus
for municipal or national endowment. I make the tug*
gestion quite disinterestedly; for as I am not an academic
person, f should not be welcomed as an unacted clastic by
committeei and cases like mine would still le&ve
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xlv Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant
forlorn hopes like the Independent and New Century
Theatres their reason for existing. The committee plan,
I may remind its critics, has been in operation in London
for two hundred years in support of Italian opera.
Returning now to the actual state of things, it is clear
that I have no grievance against our theatres. Know-
ing quite well what I was doing, I have heaped difficulties
in the way of the performance of my plays by ignoring the
majority of the manager's customers — nay, by positively
making war on them. To the actor I have been more
considerate, using all my cunning to enable him to make
the most of his technical methods; but I have not hesi-
tated on occasion to tax his intelligence very severely,
making the stage effect depend not only on nuances of
execution quite beyond the average skill produced by the
routine of the English stage in its present condition, but
on a perfectly sincere and straightforward conception of
states of mind which still seem cynically perverse to most
people, and on a goodhumoredly contemptuous or pro-
foundly pitiful attitude towards ethical conventions which
seem to them validly heroic or venerable. It is inevitable
that actors should suffer more than most of us from the
sophistication of their consciousness by romance ; and
my view of romance as the great heresy to be swept off
from art and life — as the food of modern pessimism and
the bane of modern self-respect, is far more pulling to
the performers than it is to the pit. It is hard for an actor
whose point of lionor it is to be a perfect gentleman, to
sympathise with an author who regards gentility as a
dishonest folly, and gallantry and chivalry as treasonable to
women and stultifying to men.
The misunderstanding is complicated by the fact that
actors, in their demonstrations of emotion, have made a
second nature of stage custom, which is often very much
out of date as a representation of contemporary life. Some-
times the stage custom is not only obsolete, but funda-
mentally wrong: for instance, in the simple cfte of
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Preface xv
laughter and tears, in which it deals too liberally, it is
certainly not based on the fact, easily enough discoverable
in real life, that we only cry now in the effort to bear
happiness, whilst we laugh and exult in destruction, con-
fusion, and ruin. When a comedy is performed, it is
nothing to me that the spectators laugh : any fool can make
an audience laugh. I want to see how many of them,
laughing or grave, are in the melting mood. And this
result cannot be achieved, even by actors who thoroughly
understand my purpose, except through an artistic beauty
of execution unattainable without long and arduous prac-
tice, and an intellectual effort which my plays probably do
not seem serious enough to call forth.
Beyond the difficulties thus raised by the nature and
quality of my work, I have none to complain of. I have
come upon no ill will, no inaccessibility, on the part of the
very few managers with whom I have discussed it. As
a rule I find that the actor-manager is over-sanguine, be-
cause he has the artist's habit of underrating the force of
circumstances and exaggerating the power of the talented
individual to prevail against them ; whilst I have acquired
the politician's habit of regarding the individual, however
talented, as having no choice but to make the most of his
circumstances. 1 half suspect that those managers who
have had most to do with me, if asked to name the main
obstacle to the performance of my plays, would unhesitat-
ingly and unanimously reply ** The author." And I confess
that though as a matter of business I wish my plays to be
performed, as a matter of instinct I fight against the inevit-
able misrepresentation of them with all the subtlety needed to
conceal my ill will from myself as well as from the manager.
The main difficulty* of course, is the incapacity for serious
drama of thousands of playgoers of all classes whcne shil-
lings and half guineas will buy as much in the market as
if they delighted in the highest art* But with them 1 must
frankly take the superior position* 1 know that many
managers arc wholly dependent on them, ami that no
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xvi Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant
manager is wholly Independent of them ; but I can no
more write what they want than Joachim can pat aside his
fiddle and oblige a happy company of beanfeasters with a
marching tune on the German concertina. They must
keep away from my plays: that is alL
There is no reason, however, why I should take this
haughty attitude towards those representative critics whose
complaint is that my talent, though not unentertaining,
lacks elevation of sentiment and seriousness of purpose.
They can find, under the surface-brilliancy for which
they give me credit, no coherent thought or sympathy,
and accuse me, in various terms and degrees, of an
inhuman and freakish wantonness; of preoccupation with
" the seamy side of life " ; of paradox, cynicism, and eccen-
tricity, reducible, as some contend, to a trite formula of
treating bad as good and good as bad, important as trivial
and trivial as important, serious as laughable and laughable
as serious, and so forth. As to this formula I can only say
that if any gentleman is simple enough to think that even
a good comic opera can be produced by it, I invite him to
try his hand, and sec whether anything remotely resembling
one of my plays will reward him,
I could explain the matter easily enough if 1 chose;
but the result would be that the people who misunderstand
the plays would misunderstand the explanation ten times
more* The particular exceptions taken arc seldom more
than symptoms of the underlying fundamental disagree-
ment between the romantic morality of the critics and the
realistic morality of the plays. For example, I am quite
aware that the much criticised Swiss officer in Arms and
th& Man is not a conventional stage soldier* lie suffers
from want of food and sleep ; his nerves go to pieces after
three days under fire, ending in the horrors of a rout and
pursuit; he has found by experience that it is more im-
portant to have a few bits of chocolate to cat in the
field than cartridges for his revolver. When many of my
critics rejected the$e circumstances as fantastically *im*
25005-1625005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
Preface xvil
probable and cynically unnatural, it was not necessary to
argue them into common sense : all I had to do was to
brain them, so to speak, with the first half dozen military
authorities at hand, beginning with the present Commander
in Chief. But when it proved that such unromantic (but
all the more dramatic) facts implied to them a denial of
the existence of courage, patriotism, faith, hope, and
charity, I saw that it was not really mere matter of fact
that was at issue between us. One strongly Liberal critic,
who had received my first play with the most generous
encouragement, declared, when Arms and the Man was
produced, that I had struck a wanton blow at the cause of
liberty in the Balkan Peninsula by mentioning that it was
not a matter of course for a Bulgarian in 1885 to wash his
hands every day* My Liberal critic no doubt saw soon
afterwards the squabble, reported all through Europe,
between StamboolofF and an eminent lady of the Bui*
garian court who took exception to his neglect of his
fingernails. After that came the news of his ferocious
assassination, and a description of the room prepared for the
reception of visitors by his widow, who draped it with
black, and decorated it with photographs of the mutilated
body of her husband* Here was a sufficiently sensational
confirmation of the accuracy of my sketch of the theatrical
nature of the first apings of western civilization by spirited
races just emerging from slavery. But it had no bearing
on the real issue between my critic and myself, which was,
whether the political and religious idealism which had In-
spired the rescue of these Balkan principalities from the
despotism of the Turk, and converted miserably enslaved
provinces into hopeful and gallant little states, will survive
the general onslaught on idealism which is implicit, and in-
deed explicit, in Arms and the Man and the realistic pltys of
the modern school. For my part I hope not 5 for Idealism^
which is only a flattering name for romtace in politic! And
morals, is as obnoxious to me as romance in etWci or re-
IE spite of a Liberal Revolution or two, I can no
25005-1725005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
xvill Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant
longer be satisfied with fictitious morals and fictitious good
conduct, shedding fictitious glory on robbery, starvation,
disease, crime, drink, war, cruelty, cupidity, and all the other
commonplaces of civilization which drive men to the theatre
to make foolish pretences that such things are progress,
science, morals, religion, patriotism, imperial supremacy,
national greatness and all the other names the newspapers
call them. On the other hand, I see plenty of good in the
world working itself out as fast as the idealists will allow
it; and if they would only let it alone and learn to respect
reality, which would include the beneficial exercise of re-
specting themselves, and incidentally respecting me, we
should all get along much better and faster. At all events,
I do not see moral chaos and anarchy as the alternative to
romantic convention ; and I am not going to pretend I do
merely to please the people who are convinced that the
world is only held together by the force of unanimous,
strenuous, eloquent, trumpet-tongued lying. To me the
tragedy and comedy of life lie in the consequences, some-
times terrible, sometimes ludicrous, of our persistent
attempts to found our institutions on the ideals suggested
to our imaginations by our half-satisfied passions, instead
of on a genuinely scientific natural history* And with that
hint as to what I am driving at, I withdraw and ring tip
the curtain.
25005-1825005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
Arms and The Man ; a Comedy
Candida : a Mystery
The Man of Destiny : a Trifle
You Never Can Tell : a Comedy
\Thtst phys ban publicly within tb$
J% m At SMioMfs* Htlt, md at tin
tftrtn of CMgmr, Watkingtont U*8«J» All r/-
25005-1925005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
ARMS AND THE MAN
VOL, II
25005-2025005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
'ARMS AND THE MAN
ACT I
Night* A ladfs bedchamber in Bulgaria^ in a small town
near the Dragoman Pass^ late in November in the year 1885.
Through an open window with a little balcony, a peak of the
Balkans^ wonderfully white and beautiful in the starlit snow,
seems quite close at hand, though it is really miles away. The
interior of the room is not like anything to be seen in the east
of Europe* It is half rich Bulgarian, half cheap Viennese.
Above the head of the bed, which stands against a little wall
cutting off the corner of the room diagonally', is a painted wooden
shrine, Mae and gold, with tin ivory image of Christ^ and a
light hanging before it in a pierced metal ball suspended by three
chains* The principal seat, placed toward* the otfor side of the
room and opposite the window ^ is a Turkhb ottoman. The
counterpane and hangings of the bed9 the window curtains^ the
little carpet^ and all the ornamental textile fabrics in the room
arc oriental and gorgeous: the paper on the walls h occidental
and paltry* The washtand^ against tlw wall on the side nearest
the ottoman and window^ consists of an enamelled iron faasin wit"h
a pail beneath it in a painted metal frtwte9 and a single towel on
the rail at the side* A chair near it is of Austrian bent wood*
with cai$$ seat* The dressing t&tle^ between the bed and the
^ u an ordinary pine table^ covered with a cloth of many
25005-2125005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
4 Arms and the Man Act I
colors, with an expensive toilet mirror on //. The door u en
the side nearest the bed; and then is a chest of drawers between.
This chest of drawers is also covered by a variegated natiw cloth;
and on it there is a pile of paper hacked novels^ a box of chocolate
creams^ and a miniature easel with a large photograph of an
extremely handsome officer •, wbote lofty bearing and ma^wtii
glance can be felt even from the portrait. The room i* hgfoetl
t* it
Viennese lad^ and to that end wears a fashionable /iv gtttun M
all occasions*
hastily f ull ofgoodntwi} Raina ! f Bh
pronounces it Rti/^eena^ with the streu on the ee]* Raina !
[She goes to the M9 expetting to find Raina there]. Why,
where—-? [Raina looks into the room\ Heavens, th'tU! ! arc
you out in the night air instead of in your bed ? Youll
catcli your death. Louka told me you were asleep*
RAJNA \eotning in} I sent her away, 1 wuntcil to hr
alone. The stars are so beautiful ! What in the matter ?
CATHERINE. Such news ! There hiw been a battle.
EAINA [her yes dilatmg] Ah ! [She t/wwi tfa flwk &?t tfo
ottoman and comes eagerly to C at/wine in far nighgmn^ »i
pretty garment^ but evidently the only one sfo /w &tt ].
CATHERINE, A great battle at "SIivuit7,» ! A victory f
And it was WOE by Scrgius.
25005-2225005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
Act I Arms and the Man 5
RAINA \with a cry of delight] Ah ! [Rapturously] Ohs
mother ! \Then, with sudden anxiety] Is father safe ?
CATHERINE. Of course : he sends me the news. Sergius
is the hero of the hour, the Idol of the regiment.
RAINA. Tell me, tell me. How was it ? [Ecstatically]
Oh, mother, mother, mother ! [She pulls her mother down
on the ottoman / and they kiss one another frantic ally\
CATHERINE [with surging enthusiasm] You cant guess how
splendid it is. A cavalry charge ! think of that! He
defied our Russian commanders —• acted without orders —
led a charge on his own responsibility — headed it himself
— was the first man to sweep through their guns. Cant you
see it, Raina ; our gallant splendid Bulgarians with their
swords and eyes flashing, thundering down like an avalanche
and scattering the wretched Servians and their dandified
Austrian officers like chaff. And you ! you kept Sergius
waiting a year before you would be betrothed to him. Oh,
if you have a drop of Bulgarian blood in your veins, you
will worship him when he comes back.
RAINA. What will he care for my poor little worship
after the acclamations of a whole army of heroes ? But no
matter ; I am so happy — so proud ! [She rises and walks
about exrited/y]* 11 proves that all our ideas were real after all,
CATHERINE [indignantly] Our ideas real ! What do you
mean ?
RAINA. Our ideas of what Sergius would do —- our
patriotism —-our heroic ideals*. I sometimes used to doubt
whether they were anything but dreams. Oh, what faithless
little creatures girls are ! When I buckled on Sergius^
sword lie looked so noble : it was treason to think of dis-
illusion or humiliation or failure. And yet -— and yet—
[ilttifkly] Promise me youll never toll him*
CATHKRINK. Dont ask me for promises until 1 know
what I'm promising.
RAINA. Well, it came into my head just as he was
holding me in his arms and looking into my eyes, that
perhaps we oul) had our heroic ideas because we arc so
25005-2325005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
6 Arms and the Man Act I
fond of reading Byron and Pushkin, and because we were
so delighted with the opera that season at Bucharest.
Real life is so seldom like that! — indeed never, as far ab
I knew it then. [Remorsefully] Only think, mother, I
doubted him : 1 wondered whether all his heroic qualities
and his soldiership might not prove mere imagination when
he went into a real battle. I had an uneasy fear that he
igigiuL£U^^ there beside all those clever Russian
officers,
CATHERINE. A poor figure! Shame on you ! The
Servians have Austrian officers who are just as clever as
oui Russians; but we have beaten them In every battle
for all that,
RAIN A \laugHng and sitting down again] Yes: I w*u» only
a prosaic little coward. Oh, to think that it was all true
•— that Sergius is just as splendid and noble as he looks* - -
that the world is really a glorious world for women who
can see its glory aud men who can act its romance ! What
happiness! what unspeakable fulfilment! Ah ! f A'/r
throws herself on her knew &fstdc AT mother and flings far
arms passionately round her* 7JVy are interrupted />y //v
of Louka^ a handsome^ proud girl in a pretty Mn/
peasant?! dress with doable &prm^ so defiant thtt far
to Raina if almost insolent. She Is afraid f/% CWrr/V, but
even with her goes as far as she dare\, She h just tmvcxiittJ
like the others f hut she fats m sympathy with &///;*/* /w/>/^/t/*»,
and looks contemptuously at tfie ettttiws vf tfa two btjwt $/rs
addnues them],
LOUICA* If you please, madam, all the windows are to he
closed and the shutters made fast. They say there may
be shooting in the streets. [Raina and Gttthfrine f/V /0*
gether^ alarms/]. The Servians arc being chased right
back through the pass; and they say they nnj run into the
town. Our cavalry will be after them ; and our people
will be ready for them, you may be sure, now they re*
running away. \$h> goes out m the bulnny* tmJ put/s V/v
shutters to; then jfspr faxk Into the
25005-2425005Plays: Pleasant And Unpleasant Vol.Ii.--
Act I Arms and the Man 7
RAINA. I wish our people were not so cruel. What
glory is there in killing wretched fugitives ?
CATHERINE [businesslike^ Mr banseksefing Instincts arou$ed"\
J must see that everything is made safe downstair**
RAINA [to Lottka] Leave the shutters so tliat I can just
close them if I hear any noise*
CATHERINE [aMthoHtatimly^ turning m her way to the dmr\
Oh, no, dear ; you must keep them fastened. You would
be sure to drop off to sleep and leave them open* Make
them fast, Louka.
JDOUKA. Yes, madam* ^B he fastens them\.
RAJNA. Dont be anxious about me. The moment I
hear a shot, I shall blow out the candles and roll myself
up in bed with my ears well covered.
CATHERINE, Quite the wisest thing you can do, my love*
Good-night,
RAINA. Good-night. [They Mss on® mother $ and R^in^s
emotion cmes back for a mmtnt]. Wish me joy of the
happiest night of my life — if only there are no fugitives.
CATHERINE. Go to bed, dear ; and dont think of them*
[She gees out].
LOtJicA [secretlyv to JRaiffa] If you would like the shutters
open, just give them a push like this [sfa pusfa thm: thty
open: stiff pulls them to again]. One of them ought to be
bolted at the bottom ; but the bolt*» gone*
RAINA [with digntt^ reproving her] Thank»t Looka ; but
we must do whit we are told, [Ltttk* m&k^ a frimttty
Good-night.
LOUKA \ftr&$fty\ Good-night* [Sttgits wtt ity*sggtrbtgj.
[Raim9 lift 4/